I have been doing crunches every other day for five months now. I switch the other stomach exercises I do every now and then. I only seem to have a two pack, with two squares at the top of my torso. Where are my other 4 squares? How come they don’t show up?
Perhaps they are hidden under fat? Flex and then press down on them to feel for them, try pulling your stomach skin down/up to see if they appear.
By the way, there is a good chance that those top “squares” are just part of your rib cage.
Sounds like a body fat issue.
What % of body fat do you have?
Six packs show up in very very lean individuals.
In addition to any body fat issues, it may also be that the type of crunches you are doing are mainly working your upper abdominals without doing much for the lower. You really need to change up your exercises quite a bit (and understand which exercise works which area) to work the upper, lower, and oblique abdominal muscles.
Regardless, if there is anything besides an absolute minimal amount of fat on top of them, you won’t see much difference. Spot training doesn’t do anything for the fat in a specific area, and most people won’t see any difference in their abs without losing quite a bit of fat from their midsection. This requires burning more calories than you consume, and spot training doesn’t really burn many calories.
This bears repeating, in bold.
You should take up swimming. My brother, who was on a swim team until a few years ago, had to endure some pretty intense workouts, gained a very slim physique and a very cute six-pack that he occasionally would show off to me.
Bloody hell.
As you may or may not recall, vB 2.0 used to automatically add bold tags to quotes. I briefly forgot that we don’t use that any more, and thought what I quoted would be made bold.
Anyway, the point remains that it’s your diet that matters–do all the crunches, swimming, running, etc. that you want, but if you don’t eat right, it won’t matter much.